http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
DURING the '40s, when I attended primary and secondary school, one didn't hear of school
shootings. Why? Did we have better laws banning guns in and around schools? Or hadn't guns been
invented?

Many of today's youngsters begin the school day passing through metal detectors. Guards patrol
hallways, and police cars patrol outside. Despite these measures, assaults, knifings and
shootings occur. According to the National Center for Education Statistics' 1996-97 report,
there were nearly 4,000 incidents of in-school rape and sexual battery, 11,000 incidents of
physical attacks or fights in which weapons were used, and 7,000 robberies in schools.

About 190,000 fights or physical attacks not involving weapons also occurred at schools, plus
there were 115,000 thefts and 98,000 incidents of vandalism. These statistics understate the
true magnitude of the problem because not all school violence is reported.

Along with school violence, many youngsters today exhibit little reservation in using foul
language -- not only to their peers, but in the presence of and to teachers.

Most Americans living today have little or no knowledge of yesteryear's school environment. As
such, they just might think what goes on in schools has always been. But those of my age know
that schools, even in poor neighborhoods, in earlier periods were generally civilized. Yes,
teachers had complaints about students back then, but they're trivial compared to today's. Back
then, behavioral problems were: students passing notes, chewing gum in class, running in the
hallways, jumping in or out of line and smoking in the bathrooms or fire escapes. That's a far
cry from today's problems of school rapes, murder, theft, and assaults and threats to both
students and teachers.

We just might ask what could explain the differences in student behavior today and yesteryear.

A probable answer is seen if we recognize that society's first line of defense is morality --
the morality of those thou-shalt-nots: shalt not kill, shalt not steal, shalt not lie, cheat,
etc. The importance of morality is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching.
There are not enough cops and laws to replace personal morality as a means to produce a
civilized society. Indeed, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line
of defense for a civilized society. Unfortunately, too many of us see police, laws and the
criminal justice system as society's first line of defense.

For nearly half a century, the nation's liberals have waged war on traditional values, customs
and morality. Our youth have been counseled that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what's
moral or immoral is a matter of personal opinion. During the '60s, the education establishment
challenged and undermined lessons children learned from their parents and Sunday school with
fads like "values clarification."

So-called sex education classes are simply indoctrination that undermines family/church
strictures against pre-marital sex. Lessons of abstinence were considered passe and replaced
with lessons about condoms, birth-control pills and abortions. Further undermining of parental
authority came with legal and extra-legal measures to assist teen-age abortions with neither
parental knowledge nor consent.

Customs, traditions, mores and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are
what makes for a civilized society. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example,
word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of
experience, trial and error.

Starting in the '60s, traditional behavioral norms became seen as inconvenient, fun-robbing,
or inconsistent with one social agenda or another. Traditional values were discarded without an
appreciation for the role they played in creating a civilized society, and now we're paying the
price.

What's worse is that few of us make the connection, and insist on more laws in the wake of
school
shootings.